Playstation 2 (PS2)

Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

WWF Smackdown: Just Bring It [PS2 – Beta]

monokoma
10-09-2010
1 Comment

WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It is a professional wrestling fighting game developed by YUKE’s Future Media Creators and published by THQ for the PlayStation 2 in 2001. In the early screenshots from the beta version Lionheart noticed some differences:

Jericho, Angle and Jeff Hardy had different costumes in the final game, these models can still be used with a gameshark/codebreaker

The game had 3D announcers sitting at the announcers table, who would sometimes pop-up in a “picture in picture” view to talk about the match. Both of these features where cut out of the final game (Although you can see a picture of Tazz and Micheal Cole commentating on the back of the boxart).

You were able to attack the announcers during the match

In the final game there is only one ladder in ladder/tlc matches, while in the beta there were a lot.

There are no big ladders at all in the final game.

In the beta it was possible to do attacks with the ladder which were removed from the final game (Dropkicking the ladder into the face).

You can also notice an alternate start screen.

Thanks to Lionheart for the contribution!

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GameCube, Microsoft, Nintendo, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow [XBOX PS2 GC – Beta]

monokoma
09-09-2010
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Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (also know as Shadow Strike during its development) is a third-person stealth game in the Splinter Cell series, developed and published by Ubisoft Shanghai in 2004. Below you can see a video compiled by Silenceofthehills, with lots of early concept arts and beta screens. Text and video annotations in the video help explain the differences between the earlier planned renditions and the final version of various spots in each area.

As seen in the video, a fully missing level map is viewed under the first game‘s HUD. Since the first game had cut a level and used it as an extra in another version of the game, its quite possible that these shots are from a missing level. Its also possible that these are merely early renditions of a previous level, or even simply a test level considering the unaltered HUD.

Secondly, we can also see the previous incarnation of the PS2 and GameCube port before it had be delayed and taken under various graphical tweaks to ensure the artwork was nearer to par with the original versions of the game. This is also available in the GameInformer article scan as well, which also oddly contains a beta HUD akin to that of the online mode’s. This HUD was also apparently shared between all versions of the game.

Below is the direct quote on this from Gamespot itself, posted on February 4, 2004 by Justin Calvert.

“Ubisoft has today announced that while the Xbox, PC, GBA, and cell phone versions of Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow are still on track for release next month, the PS2 and GameCube versions will now launch at a later date. The only reason given for the delay is that the development team is committed to making sure that the other two console versions are as good as the Xbox version.”

Thanks to Silenceofthehills for the contribution!

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Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Hell’s Deep [PS2 PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
30-07-2010
No Comments

Hell’s Deep is a cancelled action adventure that was in development in 2002 by Qube Software for the Playstation 2 and PC. The project was meant to be an ambitious sandbox game, similar to GTA3, but set in a big medieval city, during a dark and menacing time. As the main focus of Qube has always been the development of 3D software for 3D middleware and not games,  they probably found some problems during the development and Hell’s Deep was soon cancelled. Only few artworks and some 3D models are archived in the gallery below, to preserve its existence.

Thanks to Sewia for the contribution!

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Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Area 51 [PS2 XBOX – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
29-07-2010
5 Comments

Area 51 is a cancelled action / shooter game planned for Playstation 2 and Xbox that was in development by Midway Games West in 2000/2001. It was meant to be a direct successor to Atari’s 1995 light gun shooter which saw a re-release on PlayStation, PC and Saturn in the same year.

Sadly in 2003 Midway Games West closed down and only in 2005 Midway Studios Austin released a loose remake of the 1995 game and in 2007 another sequel called Blacksite: Area 51. We can assume that Area 51 2005 is a completely different project than the 2000 / 2001 one, as the development teams were different.

It’s interesting to notice that in 1998 / 1999 Midway Games West also worked on Area 51: Grey Dawn, an unreleased arcade brawler that could have been re-used as a base to create the concept for their cancelled Area 51 for Xbox and PS2. The only video preserved from the 2000 / 2001 project looks infact a mix between a shooter and a traditional beat ’em up. If you have more info on this lost game, please let us know!

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Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony

Full Throttle 2: Payback [PC PS2 – Cancelled]

monokoma
27-07-2010
1 Comment

Full Throttle: Payback (aka Full Throttle 2) is a cancelled action adventure game that was in development in 2000 by LucasArts, planned to be released for PC and with a rumored Playstation 2 port. As we can read in Wikipedia, the game would have been an official sequel to continue the storyline of the original Full Throttle. Since Tim Schafer had already left the company at the time, Larry Ahern, who was involved in the original game’s development, was appointed the project lead and Bill Tiller, the art director.

At the early stages, the project received positive feedback from other LucasArts employees but according to Tiller, it eventually fell apart because of disagreements on the game style between the productive team and “a particularly influential person” within the management, which lead to a series of “mistakes”. The production ceased in November 2000, when 25% of the levels and about 40% of the preproduction art were complete. Both Ahern and Tiller left LucasArts in 2001, after Payback was canceled.

From Retro Gamer #62 we can read some more info of Payback from Larry Ahern, who designed ‘a version of it that never got off the drawing board before [he] quit, and the bloody remains of it were handed over to another team’. Some of it we already knew from the Classic Adventure Gaming article.

The villain was a Senator with an anti-biker agenda, pushing to replace the worn-out highways with new, biker-unfriendly hover lanes. The game also featured Ben’s estranged weasel-of-a-brother, who was mixed up in one of the Senator’s shady operations, and a more central lead for Father Torque. Maureen had a cameo, but the female lead was a reporter who covers Ben after his subsequent fame for the alleged murder of Malcolm Corley. We had some fun new biker gangs also, like the Dragons, who sported flamethrowers on the handlebars of their bikes, and the Leeches, a gang in rocket-powered side-cars that cruise the highways jumping from vehicle to vehicle and attaching to them to syphon fuel.

Some time later LucasArts decided to start the development on the even more action-heavy Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels, that was also cancelled in the end.

Thanks to Robert Seddon and lorenzo55 for the contributions!

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